tional borders in Western Europe in order to rescue their property accumulated in Ukraine is also quite large. Th e Foreign Ministry reported 123,300 Ukraini-ans living in Germany, 30,000 in Great Britain, 30,000 in France, 22,000 in the Czech Republic and 12,000 in Austria.14 Th e number of children of Ukrainian oligarchs studying at leading North American universities may also amount to several thousand.
5. Ukrainian nationals who have fl ed from the East Ukrainian war since 2014.
It is yet to be seen how the annexation (“temporary occupation”) of Crimea by Russia and the military operation – offi cially called an “Anti-Terrorist Operation”
– of the (hybrid) war in Eastern Ukraine will infl uence the ethnic and linguistic composition of the country’s population. It is certain though that several hun-dred thousand people were forced to leave the front-line zone (many of them for foreign countries such as Russia), and several thousand men of military age left Ukraine out of fear of mobilization, and no one knows how many of them will re-turn home. In view of the danger of war, Poland, Greece and the Czech Republic are evacuating their minorities living in Ukraine or are assisting them to relocate.
By all accounts, the number of Ukrainian nationals living abroad has considerably increased as a result of the armed confl ict.
section including economics, history, philosophy and law, literature, language and art criticism. It has a comprehensive institutional network. Th e regional science centers include the following: 1) western center (in Lviv), 2) southern center (in Odessa), 3) north-east center (in Kharkiv), 4) the Dnieper center (in Dnipropet-rovsk), and 5) the western center in Kiev. Earlier, there used to be a sixth regional research center in Crimea, but its funding was stopped in 2014 after the annexa-tion of the peninsula by Russia. Th e structure of the Academy also includes the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine,16 as well as 168 research institutions and 46 research-production units.
Only a few of the institutions working under the Academy address minority issues in some respect (such as the Institute of Sociology,17 the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies,18 the Koretsky Institute of State and Law,19 the Ryl-sky Institute for Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology,20 the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies,21 the Institute of Ukrainian Language,22 the Kry-piakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies,23 etc.). Regional research has a central role in the area of social sciences and liberal arts, where the linguistic and cultural issues of the minorities living in the country are addressed primarily from an eth-nic-political perspective. Th e (national and ethnic) minority is primarily seen as a political issue determined by historical conditions. It is especially the Hungar-ians, the Romanians and the Crimean Tatars that represent a political factor – the same ethnic communities that are characterized, along with the Russians, with a strong endeavor to preserve their language and that are clearly visible as a na-tionality at the county level, as their ratio comes close to 10% in certain regions.
Until recently, the Ukrainian Russians have not emerged as a minority issue or as an ethnic minority in scientifi c research. Th eir social organizations represent the Russian-speaking people, the consumers of Russian culture rather than ethnic Russians – irrespective of their ethnicity. 95% of Ukraine’s population comprised
16 Національна бібліотека України імені В. І. Вернадського / Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/ (17-11-2015)
17 Інститут соціології / Institute of Sociology. http://i-soc.com.ua/ukr/index.php
(17-11-2015)
18 Інститут політичних і етнонаціональних досліджень ім. І. Ф. Кураса / Kuras Institute of Po-litical and Ethnic Studies. http://www.ipiend.gov.ua/ (17-11-2015)
19 Інститут держави і права ім. В. М. Корецького / Koretsky Institute of State and Law. http://
idpnan.org.ua/ (17-11-2015)
20 Інститут мистецтвознавства, фольклористики та етнології ім. М. Т. Рильського / Rylsky Institute for Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology. http://www.etnolog.org.ua/ (17-11-2015)
21 Інститут демографії та соціальних досліджень імені М. В. Птухи / Ptoukha Institute for De-mography and Social Studies. http://www.idss.org.ua/ (17-11-2015)
22 Інститут української мови НАН України / Institute of Ukrainian Language. http://www1.nas.
gov.ua/institutes/ium/Pages/default.aspx (16-11-2015)
23 Інститут українознавства ім. І. Крип’якевича / Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
http://www.inst-ukr.lviv.ua/uk/ (16-11-2015)
Ukrainians and Russians, and at least a quarter of them belong to the ethnic Rus-sian group.
At the same time, special attention is devoted to the minorities in Ukraine by each of the aff ected mother countries. Poland, Slovenia, Hungary and Roma-nia provided a card that recognizes nationality and grants certain privileges in the given country, and two of these countries – going against Ukrainian regula-tions – even extended dual citizenship generously in order to forge closer relation-ships with their fellow citizens. Romanian diplomacy has been making constant eff orts to ensure that Moldovans and Romanians are not separated in Ukraine.
Th e Polish community, with its 150,000 people, is roughly as large as the Hungar-ian population, but the ethnic Polish people – unlike the HungarHungar-ians, who have strong ambitions to preserve their native language, have a low level of profi ciency in the offi cial language, and are less integrated into society – have been assimi-lated almost entirely, and the majority of them have become Ukrainian-speaking.
At the same time, the Poles in Ukraine have a highly organized community with close ties with the mother country: Polish physicians and teachers go to Poland to acquire professional experience, while kids and young people spend their holiday in Polish youth camps and pursue their studies at Polish universities. Membership in social organizations specially supported by the Polish state is strictly subject to being a member of the Polish ethnic community. Hungary plays a leading role in research in that its Academy undertakes to manage the scientifi c activities of Hungarian communities living outside its borders, including Ukraine, and pursue organized multidisciplinary research into the given ethnic community.
Russia also supports “compatriots abroad” [соотечественники за рубежом], that is, the Russians living outside its national borders, as well as the representa-tives of the native nationalities living within its borders who live abroad. As inter-preted by Russian politics, the former category comprises a demographic reserve, and is an important factor in Russian foreign policy. In accordance with the 1999 Russian Federal Law “On State Policy of the Russian Federation in respect of com-patriots abroad” are Russian citizens permanently residing outside the Russian Federation, persons and their descendants residing outside the territory of the Russian Federation and related as a rule to peoples historically living on the ter-ritory of the Russian Federation, persons who made a free choice in favor of the spiritual, cultural and legal relationship with the Russian Federation and whose relatives in the direct ascending line formerly resided in the territory of the Rus-sian Federation (persons who used to be citizens of the USSR, those who live in the countries that were part of the Soviet Union, persons acquired the citizenship of those countries or those who become stateless citizens; immigrants from the Russian State, the Russian Republic, RSFSR, USSR and the Russian Federation who used to have the proper citizenship and have become citizens of a foreign
country or stateless citizens).24 Since 2006 there has been a Decree of the Presi-dent on Measures to provide assistance to voluntary resettlement into the Russian Federation of compatriots living abroad.25 Th e inclination to return home is grow-ing every year; accordgrow-ing to the state migration offi ce data, over 160,000 people returned home in 2015.26 According to the estimate of the Ministry of Foreign Af-fairs, there are 17 million Russian nationals and “fellow citizens” living outside the borders of Russia, the majority of them in Ukraine (Kazakhstan is in second place with 5 million people).27 Another important concept in Russian political commu-nication is “Russkiy Mir” (Russian World) – the community of people dispersed globally who are representatives of the Russian language and culture, or foreign-ers who study in Russia, have family, cultural and intellectual ties with Russia, and see it as a friendly country.28 Th ere are several foundations (also) fi nanced by the state that participate in the implementation of these programs (Russkiy Mir Foundation, Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund, Foundation for Sup-porting and Protecting the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad), which also take part in research projects by announcing competitions.